Fred

I was in a client meeting the other day talking with a local radio media rep. The conversation of course eventually ended up on the various forms of media available today to advertisers. We discussed social media, TV, print and of course radio. When the subject of print came up the radio rep said "oh you can't build a brand with print they have to hear it". As I took a long sigh at her comment and glanced towards my client...who was nodding his approval of her statement, it occurred to me this is exactly the reason a business needs a marketing agency. And that is to protect them from media reps that only want to "sell" them the media that they are currently selling...this month. What I will be telling my client in our next meeting is that you do not build a brand with any media. The best definition of a "brand" that I've seen is that it is your promise to your customers. Excellent! Building a brand is so much more than telling customers on some radio station that you are "the best". It means that when you "talk the talk" you have to "walk the walk" and deliver, better than anyone, your product or service. And what better than a marketing agency, which has no allegiance to any media companies, to help you talk the talk and more importantly walk the walk. So the next time a media rep walks through your door and tells you and shows you all the reasons why you should spend every last dollar of your marketing budget with their company know this. They do not have your best interest in mind...go get a marketing professional who has no problem taking them to task. I sincerely hope that you contact us, Grassroots Marketing, but will be more than satisfied if you hear my words and turn to another qualified agency that understands that you are the client and results are the bottom line.

I really had to sit down and write about the marketing seminars that we have been giving for about a year and a half now. You see, we partnered up with our good buddy Larry Rossini at the Small Business Development Center last year to put on a series of what we call “Marketing Bootcamps”. These things are about 3 hours long and run the gamut from Marketing 101 to website design and development to social media to how to close a sale. The whole gang here at GRM puts a huge amount of work into these things…and we always get so much more out of them than what we put in.

The last one was just a couple of days ago and we had so many folks show up that we had to quickly create an overflow room! Luckily, we were planning on streaming the entire seminar through our website. Check it out if you haven’t already, it’s still there. Before you know it we had a packed main room and about 10 to 15 folks in the overflow room watching on a big screen. To look out at the audience and see people generally interested in being there and hearing what you have to say…I gotta say it’s a big rush. The questions they ask, the points they make that even we haven’t considered…trust me it’s definitely a two-way learning session. And then at the end of the 3 hours they still want to stick around and visit with all of us, well, we’ve never had so much fun!

I personally want to thank the SBDC, the Small Business Administration and most of all…the small business people that attend our seminars. You serve as a reminder of why GrassRoots Marketing was founded 5 years ago…to be dedicated to and focused on being marketers for small businesses. Thanks! And we’re all looking forward to our next Bootcamp on website design and development later this year.

I remember back a number of years ago when it was said “the Internet is the death of retail”. No one will want to go to a retail outlet anymore when they can buy it online. Of course we all know what happened…the great “dot com bust”. Before the great “bust” the prevailing thought was you can put anything online and it will sell like hotcakes…yeah right. What actually happened was the “old” way of selling products eventually adjusted to the “new” way of selling products. Yeah of course, Internet giants like Amazon and EBay have survived and even thrived…but only after a long and unprofitable haul. Here’s my point…the current prevailing “thought” that social media is king and let’s call it “old” media is dead…I’m not buying it!

Now before all you Web 2.0 social media “experts” line up to burn me at the stake…hear me out. I am a huge believer in the Web 2.0 movement and in particular social media and how it is a great marketing tool. As a true marketer, anytime I can have a conversation with my customer and determine exactly what they want/need I’m in. The Internet used to be a good secondary marketing research tool…now with social media it’s a very good primary marketing research tool. Now our clients can literally have a virtual focus group/customer panel without a huge amount of expense…does it get any better than that?

Ok meat and potatoes time…even my 22 year old daughter is getting tired of the commercialization of Facebook…one of the “big three” of social media. Her main complaint to me is “Dad, if they want to send me a commercial that is what TV is for”. So what’s up with that? Is she saying there is a time a place for everything? Facebook…good for personal stuff…TV/radio/newspaper good for commercial stuff.  And yeah I know the younger crowd is “first adopters” and will probably abandon Facebook just like they abandoned MySpace. But, here’s my point, do you really believe that “old media” is going to just accept their death and go away? Those that understand what is going on…and how to deal with it are going to survive and even thrive…TV in my mind has the inside track and radio if they understand the concept can come back from the dead. Newspaper? Well…they have content providers…and content is king…if they understand that it’s not ink on paper anymore they can adapt and thrive as well.

Final thought? Just like the dot com boom and bust…this will shake out as somewhere in the middle. Old media meet new media…like it or not.

A couple of weeks ago on the heels of Ford's appearance before some Congressional committees, I had to deal with a major firestorm online.

In short, the issue was that there was a Ford fansite called TheRangerStation.com that received a cease & desist letter from Ford, and the owner posted that Ford was asking for $5,000 and the URL to be turned over. It turns out there was much more to the story. The owner was selling counterfeit Ford goods, and together, we reached a reasonable solution to the situation.

Ron Ploof, a B-to-B social media consultant, has created a completely masterful case study of what happened here. I'll leave it to him to set it up, tell the story, and draw out the lessons, here in this Scribd document.

In the end, it's created a point of conversation for us internally (and externally, I might add). I've committed to creating a more fluid conversation between Ford's Communications area and Office of General Counsel, so we don't run into these surprise situations again. We'll still need to protect the brand and our licensees, but if we can work with enthusiast sites, we'll be in a much better place.

Related links:
Interview on For Immediate Release
Real-time review of the day's events on Voltage Blog
Left the Box's assessment

What are your thoughts? Would you have done anything differently?